meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

‘The Iran Conversation No One Is Having’ with David Frum

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Comedy Interviews, Education, Society & Culture, Comedy, Self-improvement

4.5905 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Frum had a front-row seat the last time America went to war against a Middle Eastern adversary. He was in the George W. Bush administration in the lead-up to the Iraq War. In fact, as one of Bush's speechwriters, he wrote the line that came to define American foreign policy for the first decade of the 21st century. Four months after the World Trade Center towers were turned to rubble, President Bush channelled Frum in his State of the Union speech, saying that rogue states which harbored, financed and aided terrorists -- like North Korea, Iraq and Iran -- "constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." This idea, of America being at war with an alliance of dangerous terrorist states, provided the rationale for going to war with one of them, Iraq. In fact, David Frum went on to write a book in 2004 with a fellow neoconservative, Richard Perle, a chief architect of the Iraq War, entitled "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror". It became a bible of neoconservative foreign policy, in which Frum and Perle argued, among other things, for taking immediate, decisive action against Iran. Fast-forward 22 years and David Frum is one of the most prominent and persuasive conservative voices against Donald Trump. He has written two anti-Trump books, "Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic", and "Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy". He's a staff writer at The Atlantic and the host of the podcast The David Frum Show. And since the invasion of Iraq, his view of American power has grown more nuanced. David joins Josh to explain the precarious position in which war with Iran puts not just the Middle East... but American democracy itself.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

How do you get from what was to what is?

0:03.1

Success does not mean there are elections within 24 months.

0:06.4

Success means that Iran's capacity to do harm is limited,

0:10.2

and there's a transition, a clear, workable transition path

0:13.4

to an orderly progress towards something better.

0:16.1

When you have decades of rule by terror,

0:18.7

you build up a big supply of vendettists.

0:24.1

G'day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. When the bombs started raining down

0:31.4

on Iran, I could think of one person who I really wanted to help me understand what was going

0:37.0

on, what might

0:38.1

happen, what the consequences might be in the Middle East, and also around the world, and for

0:43.1

American democracy itself. That person was David Fromm, who had a front row seat to the last

0:49.6

time America went to war in the Middle East, and it didn't go so well. From was George W. Bush's

0:56.6

speechwriter, well, one of four speechwriters, but he wrote a very famous line, which came to

1:02.5

define American foreign policy for the first decade of the 21st century. It was in George

1:08.2

W. Bush's first state of the union address.

1:15.9

It was just four months after the World Trade Center towers had been turned to rubble.

1:17.8

And President Bush said this.

1:24.1

States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil,

1:27.0

arming to threaten the peace of the world.

1:33.3

So this idea of President Bush's, of David Frums, of the rest of the Bush administration,

1:40.4

that America faced a sort of a rogue alliance of terrorist states, provided the rationale for going to war against one of them, Iraq, and the way that war went and the impact

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Josh Szeps, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Josh Szeps and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.